I think what makes it sex work for me is if you would not be having sex with that person if you were not getting financial gain for it.
I agree with that, mostly. I don't think that whether you're married or not has any inherent link to it, though. Your intentions are what's important, not how many other people are being slept with, or if there's certification.
Because Occam suggests that beautiful young women rarely flock to really old, really wealthy men for the sake of love alone. I'm sure they could have fond feelings for them, but doubt that Cupid's arrow is the only thing involved.
While I'm sure that there are hot young women sleeping with rich old men they wouldn't otherwise sleep with, I don't think I know which ones are which, and wouldn't even know which ones are *likely* to be which. I encounter a lot of "I wouldn't sleep with someone their age, so why would anyone?" and I get flustered by that. It makes no sense. Obviously some people fall in love with "unlikely" people, and there are no impossible pairings.
There are old people I'd totally hit like a Mac truck, but fair point, and I'll amend it to "high probablility of it being sex work."
Plei. I'm sorry I pinged a personal issue by phrasing it such a way as to sound like I thought everyone who disagreed on interpretation had not read the text. Not what I intended to imply but it certainly came out that way, so still completely my fault.
Eh, happens.
For whatever it's worth, two of the most commonly suggested inspirations for the character are Lillie Langtry [link] and Lola Montez [link] either of whom would have been in the "who a reader in Doyle's day would have thought of when thinking of royal mistresses and potential scandals and stuff like that" category.
Lola Montez! Lola Montez!
HIGH ON MY LIST OF HISTORICAL HOTTIES, YES.
Wait. Right. That's totally not her appeal for you. I keep forgetting. ;p
Wait. Right. That's totally not her appeal for you. I keep forgetting. ;p
Nope, sorry. I just think she's awesome.
(God, that's 90% of our text messages in a nutshell, Jilli.)
Ha! You are not wrong.
Huh. So any mention of Lola Montez makes me want to reread the Flashman book she appears in.
I do think that, much like ACD Holmes and Watson were originally written as young men and the BBC series has tried to recapture the that feel for the audience and push away the cobwebs, the reinterpretation of Adler for modern audiences seems to try to recapture some of what the original readers would have read into the character in the portrayal.
It's always tricky. Times and customs change, and, of course, modern era fans of the original are reading with a completely different context. It obviously worked for some of us, not for others.
(Secondary and critical note, if I could somehow manage to remove the unreconstructed Orientalism from Moff and Gatiss's imaginations, I so totally would. It's like a drinking game with me at this point. Although if I really were drinking, I don't think I could've ever got through the Lucifer Box books and remained upright.)
